Carthians
The Carthian Movement The Revolution "We're gonna have a new city, a clean city. And anybody that doesn't like it is gonna see the Sun." I still go to meetings. This isn’t the usual meeting place. This is the place with the slightly faulty fluorescent tube and the plastic chairs all in neat rows and the Che flag and the bookstand with copies of Engels and a newish edition of Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? which is, I can tell you, one of the most inspiring books I have ever read, before or after I died. This is the friendly place. Where we have the meetings when new folks are here. New blood. Danny and Steve have just given the presentation about Solidarity for Cuba, and Owen’s talk on why we have to support Robert Mugabe’s stand against imperialism went down a storm (although I have to bite my hand to keep from laughing). We’ve only had one walk-out so far. That’s all right. Nine new guys and one new girl are left. And that’s because Annalise and Emily brought them along, and Annalise and Emily both fill out a tight revolutionary T-shirt in the most fetching way a man (or woman — I’m not a bigot) can imagine. This is why they handle the recruitment. They are willing to make sacrifices for the cause. And here’s Annalise now, looking just as glamorous and dangerous as she did when she was burning draft papers at Berkeley in the Spring of ‘65, and I thought, oh, baby, the Movement could use you. It’s time to mobilize. Annalise is taking volunteers. ANSWER (that’s Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, and we’d never take them over because they have a terrible acronym) are infiltrating the organization of a march against the war. The Worker’s Rights Group, who split from the Worker’s World Party, are going to crash the protest and canvas for members and we can’t have that because they’re splitters. Also, we need to keep the numbers for ourselves because there’s a bunch of us need to eat, you know? Annalise doesn’t say that last part. Frank — sixty-seven years old and not looking a day over twenty-five — is running interference, scooping up the leaflets from the other protesters, and Georgie is handing out our leaflets. Of course, it’s agreed I’ll be in the office with Annalise, Karl, and Emily, manning the phones and monitoring the police, which is vital, and more plausible than sleeping, which is what we’ll actually be doing. This is the part where we’ve all volunteered to do stuff and now, Annalise turns on the new guys. “OK. Your turn to do something.” Twenty pairs of eyes turn on them. And every one of them ours. Maybe seven of them were picked because we thought they’d be useful. They’re going to be staying with the girls for drinks, after. And maybe some indoctrination. A few minutes tied to a chair under Emily’s care, and none of them are going to remember this next bit. Frank and the boys are already holding them down in their chairs. The other two, a skinny boy with blue hair and this lovely round-faced girl with a face full of piercings, well. They’re students. They’re far from home. They’re not going to be missed for a while. And the leadership are so very hungry. The screams of the new recruits as Karl, the girls, and I pounce on our after-meeting feast are hidden beneath a rousing chorus of the Internationale. Next time we have a meeting, they’ll be singing too. I do love a good meeting. You want to join the Carthian Movement because You were politically radical in life. You believe that the society of the dead needs to change. You want to blow things up. You are holding a grudge against a vampire elder. You are, for all the terrible things you do, an idealist. You are afraid that nothing will ever change. The big picture The Carthian Movement uses the ideologies of the living to bring democracy to the dead. Anyone who disagrees with that gets their haven firebombed. The condition of the vampire is, according to the Carthians, in stasis. Stasis is equivalent to certain destruction. Human political movements can gain power swiftly and effectively, and keep it, and as far as the Carthians can tell, they do it well. The Carthians offer a new deal to the neonate and the outcast, a new way of governing the Kindred without the self-serving aristocracies of the Invictus, with whom the Firebrands of the Revolution often come into conflict. Some of these revolutionaries want to tear things down, while others believe in diplomacy. The Carthians run from knuckle-headed thugs with bats and knives to smooth-talking politicians who use the voice of the common vampire. They recruit from those Kindred who feel disenfranchised or wronged — and vampires very easily feel wronged. We can fix it, say the Carthians. We can bring the change that you wish to see in the night, and you will benefit, as will we all. The Carthians promise upheaval, and in many ways are the change they wish to see, modifying their ideals on an almost nightly basis. The Carthians do not question the necessity of reform, but they are willing to question reforms themselves. Some nights, this makes them fractious…but on many more, it leaves them well prepared. The Carthians promise real change — but into what? Carthian elders, their consciences worn down by their long Requiems, are appallingly dangerous, because they do not back down. They’re pragmatic monsters, but see themselves as part of something bigger and will make sacrifices for the future. They will suffer and inflict suffering to make Carthian Law the only law. Where we came from In 1779, an apostate from the Parisian Lancea et Sanctum published a pamphlet on a private press entitled Contre Les Vampires Patriarcals. Like much of the best literature of France just before the Revolution, it was a subtle, nuanced text, rich with hidden meanings. Presenting as an allegory the idea of the aristocrat as bloodsucking monster, the pamphlet was in fact a call to arms for the neonate to throw off the shackles of the elder. The treatise was published under the name of Emmanuel Baptiste Carth. This wasn’t the author’s name. His name was apparently Eric Giraud. Giraud met Final Death under a midnight guillotine in the 1790s, but Carth lived on; and as revolutionary fervor gripped France, Carth took on a life of his own. Across Europe, east and west, pamphlets under the name of E. B. Carth appeared, each offering a political message for the dead coded under an apparent tract for the living. Neonate movements and reformers had existed before, but now they had a name and banner under which to join, a shared identity. By the middle of the 19th century, vampires who followed the pamphleteers were calling themselves Carthians. E. B. Carth is still publishing, mostly on the Internet. Everyone knows that Carth is a fiction, but then, that’s the source of his power. He is an idea, and the Carthians are those who will kill for an idea. It is the power of the Carthian idea that created, in the second half of the 20th century, the phenomenon of Carthian Law, where the Blood itself obeys the ideology of the vampires. Carthian rhetoric, with its talk of equality and justice, can make the Movement seem the most benevolent of the vampire covenants. But the Carthians’ ideas of equality extend only as far as the dead. Some of them are capable of treating the living with a terrifying utilitarianism. After all, they are called to serve the greater good. Our practices Everything the Carthians do is dedicated towards the creation of a new vampire order. The traditions of vampire society have their uses, but the way the established covenants enforce them leaves a lot to be desired. The Carthians preach that all vampires are equal, but the fact is that some corpses are more equal than others. Nobody’s going to shed a red tear for a knight who follows her prince to the stake. Since the Carthians use political systems adapted from modern ideologies among the living, it’s only natural for them to use the human radical groups they so resemble. Political groups, particularly radical groups with uncompromising views, split like crazy. The Carthians, with the powers of the dead and the application of a few drops of blood, can bring splinter cells under their power. All the Carthians muck in — it’s fair to say that Carthians are probably the busiest vampires, always seeming to have a project, always looking for an opening. They aren’t, however, mindless zealots. Where the Invictus deal in intimidation and bribes, the Carthians are often the first to the bargaining table. Somehow, though, the deals they make always manage to favor the Revolution. Carthians are often found in the governments of other covenants. Being open about their shared agendas makes them a peculiar type of honest. Other covenants, particularly those that don’t possess a specific political ideology, find that honesty makes the Firebrands the devil you know. The Ordo Dracul and the Circle of the Crone often think this way. For all that Carthian ideology sets them in conflict with existing governments, their reputed ideological purity makes them reliable. Their usefulness as part of the state in turn gives them a wedge to push their reforms. Nicknames: The Revolution (within the covenant), the Firebrands, the Movement (within the covenant), the Vermin (Invictus) Concepts Sexy campus recruiter, firebrand ideologue, distant intellectual, street ganger, disenchanted war veteran, guilt-ridden liberal arts teacher, well-intentioned political extremist, middle-class freedom fighter, liberation theologian When we are in power Our ideologies triumphant, Carthian purges and executions begin. Vampires who surrender and recant their former allegiances should expect to be closely watched by Carthian thought police, lest they end up mindcontrolled or bound by blood bonds. Nonetheless, they’re allowed in — a successful Carthian state grows by bringing vampires outside the covenant into the fold. Yet it’s often at this point, when we have won, that we are at our least united. We Firebrands are well aware that power corrupts, and many of us are as willing to remove our own governments as those of the Invictus. When we are in trouble Carthians against the wall operate as plucky underdogs; we work in a strange way, in harmony with our ideals. Without the problems of power to undermine us, the Movement can behave as it always meant to. We are still monsters, but we hold together. We support each other, keep our possessions — ghouls, herds, havens — in common, and work hard to ensure our both survival, and the survival of our comrades. When in the minority, we do our best to recruit or suborn lower-level members of the establishment, and are rarely above stooping to honeytraps, blackmail, and mind-control. Yet, our commitment also breeds a kind of patience. The Revolution will happen. And it will happen in fire. But not yet. Suicide will not bring change.